Civil Rights Quotes

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.

Pete du Pont

Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

A. Philip Randolph

We do not regard it as acceptable that those of us who regard it as our duty to challenge any legislation which may have the effect of detracting from the civil rights and individual liberties if any citizen if the UK should be traduced in this way.

Sir Menzies Campbell

The folk thing was about civil rights... ... Folk music is the music of the working class, the music of the folks. Blues is folk music.

Civil Rights opened the windows. When you open the windows, it does not mean that everybody will get through. We must create our own opportunities.

Mary Frances Berry

We need to guarantee equal rights and civil rights and say that, here in America, workers have the right to organize - women have the right to choose - and justice belongs to everyone regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation.

This isn’t about the conflict; it is about the government doing nothing to acknowledge the current human rights violations being committed against Tamil civilians.

Anna Neistat

Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes. It is this hope that has sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired than before.

Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher - let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it.
Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights.
Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher.
It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man.
Make a career of humanity.
Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights.
You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.